Paint
by nottonyharrison
Summary: Working with a partner is new for both of them. Working with a partner who mere weeks ago was an adversary is more than new, it's terrifying. Surely carrying around incriminating photos of each other will be an excellent trust building exercise... right?


**Title: **Paint

**Author: **nottonyharrison

**Rating: **PG-13

**Genre(s): **Humour(ish)/Romance

**Warnings: **Coarse Language, Nudity, UST, Age Difference, Barely Legal

**Pairing: **ClinTasha/BlackHawk

**Summary: **Working with a partner is new for both of them. Working with a partner who mere weeks ago was an adversary is more than new, it's terrifying. Surely carrying around incriminating photos of each other will be an excellent trust building exercise... right?

**A/N: **Written for the ClinTasha promptathon at be_compromised. Original prompt from inkvoices: _Clint and Natasha take photos of each other for blackmail purposes – photos of Clint in purple glittery boxers for example, or Natasha wearing Mickey Mouse ears with ice cream on her nose. Photos of each other being daft and playful. Do they actually blackmail each other into things with them? Does anyone else ever see the photos? Do they stay a private thing? Fluffy and fun :)_

This is my first foray into Avengers fic, and I'm super nervous! Although I have over thirty stories archived for other fandoms, I always freak out a little when I stick my toes in a new one for the first time. This story is unbetaed, seeing as I don't really know anyone around here yet, so please forgive any mistakes for the moment. I'm sure I will be writing more in the future, so please do get in touch if you're good with the written word and keen to give my work the once over.

…**...**

It wasn't until he was dangling next to a thirty-second floor window that he realised there were better options.

Ladies underwear. Cock in a pie. Maybe even cuddling a fluffy bunny while surrounded by four year olds, grinning as if it were his calling in life.

Trust, she had said. It was about trust.

Dream up something equally as embarrassing for me, she'd said.

Seriously, anything goes, she'd said.

Well fuck if he would dream up anything as bad as being pressed up against Agent Coulson's shiny window, three hundred feet up in the air and wearing nothing but a leopard print thong.

The lights in the apartment were on, and Coulson was shuffling around his kitchen in a blue and white checkered apron, oblivious to the nearly naked archer hanging outside the glass and steel wall.

Barton figured that it could have been worse. She could have asked him to do it in the daytime. But as he checked one more time that the more senior agent was occupied chopping his onions and garlic, he couldn't help but wish he had never been sent on the mission to assassinate Natalia Romanova.

He wished he had never made contact, however accidental.

He wished he hadn't seen her humanity.

He really really wished he hadn't checked out her ass. He would be lying if he said her ass wasn't part of the reason he decided to recruit her, rather than shoot an arrow between her eyes.

And then every time he thought about her incredible back end, he was reminded that she was eighteen and far too young for him. Legal, but too young. Even if she _was_ better at breaking peoples kneecaps than he was._Eighteen._

_Fuck._

He had it bad.

Pushing thoughts of his new partner to the back of his mind, he took action, completing his task as quickly as possible, and flipping the brake on the zip line to return him to the roof of the building.

It wasn't until he was tugging his worn black tee shirt over his head that the phone rang, the shrill ring cutting through the city noise echoing up from the streets of downtown New York.

He pulled on his jacket quickly and unzipped the pocket, pulling the phone out and flipping it open in one motion. As he held it to his ear he turned and stepped back to the edge of the roof, looking down and zeroing in on where she stood on a nearby building. She wasn't dressed in her usual black catsuit, but the tight jeans and leather jacket still set his pulse racing. The tripod she held in her free hand however, filled that heart with a sense of dread.

"I like it," she finally said, voice deadpan. "It has a sense of _cheekiness_ to it." She was looking right at him, and he could see the beginnings of a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

He grunted and frowned, ready to retort but thinking better of it, snapping the phone closed.

It rang again, and he rolled his head around on his shoulders, groaning and eventually settling his eyes back on the redhead across the street.

"Yeah, yeah. Diner in ten. Keep your panties on."

"Why would I take my panties off?" The genuine confusion in her voice reminded him that, she wasn't your normal eighteen year old.

"Figure of speech, Romanoff." He rolled his eyes and reached down to pick up his backpack.

"You Americans are _weird._"

"_We're _weird? What the fuck did you just make me do in the interest of _trust?_" He was shoving his gear in the pack carelessly now, ready to get off the rooftop.

"That's different." It was a matter of fact statement and he didn't bother with a reply, instead letting out a heavy sigh and a flippant _whatever_, closing the phone again, this time with a little less force.

It wasn't until they were sitting in a cheap diner, sipping coffee and tucking into butter and syrup covered pancakes that the perfect retaliation plan hit him.

"So, Romanoff. How would you feel about getting naked in a car?"

…**...**

The sound of her struggling with her clothing, as she manoeuvred herself in the back seat of Coulson's Audi had him almost breathless with laughter. His sensitive hearing aids easily picked up her expletive laden monologue, a welcome consolation for not being able to enjoy the view himself. If it had been a regular mission, he would have more than likely been irritated at the amount of noise she was making, but they both knew Coulson would be stuck in this meeting for half a day, and he had scrambled the surveillance equipment.

After a few minutes, the gentle whirr of one of the blacked out electric windows rolling down alerted him to her being in position, and he took a single photograph, just caching the top of a lush breast over the edge of the door frame. One photo was the agreement.

He flashed his watch once, and the window rolled back up, more grunts and groans followed, and eventully she slunk out of the car, a streak of red paint visible along the top of her jeans.

She stomped off across the parking lot to the old blue BMW he had left parked underneath a tree. Standing there, leaning against it, an air of impending violence eminated from her person, and he pushed down a slight tinge of fear. Grinning cockily, he fished the keys out of his pocket and pressed the remote as he moved towards the car.

"Get in."

She scowled and reached for the doorhandle. As he walked around the car, the confident swagger and careless kicking at the ground belied the unease he still felt around this girl. They were going to be working together indefinitely, and yet they were blackmailing each other already. He wasn't sure exactly how good an idea this _exercise in trust _was going to turn out to be.

He sat heavily in the drivers seat and turned the key. "So... breakfast?"

"Can we have pancakes?"

"Sure."

A short drive and a subway ride later, and they were sitting back in the same diner they had shared their late night 'breakfast for dinner' the night before. She sat across from him, her usual glare visible over the rather large mouthful of pancake hovering a few inches from her face.

"Yeesh, Romanoff. You have no sense of humour."

She shoved the fork into her mouth and chewed slowly, taking her time and eventually swallowing with a wince. His mouth ran dry at the sight of her throat contracting around the food, and he mentally slapped himself for being turned on by something so... _bodily functioney_. "You didn't exactly dash away skipping from your rooftop last night."

"Touché." He grinned and nodded a little, turning his attention to his own plate. He wasn't going to lie, a small part of him took great glee in her being charged with protecting a photo of his bare ass.

…**...**

Years later, they sat in the same diner around a table piled high with food and discarded sandwich wrappers, surrounded on both sides by a raggedy bunch of freaks and geeks. The décor was different - the place served Middle Eastern food now – but the layout was still largely the same, curved counter at the back, booths and small tables down the sides, and a couple of larger, round tables in the middle.

None of them spoke. The last few days had been a cluster fuck of epic proportions, culminating in what could only have been described as the most improbable battle in Earth's history.

He still didn't know how he felt about the whole thing. He didn't know how he was _supposed_ to feel. What do you tell yourself when you've been under the mind control of a sociopathic demigod, and coerced into killing your allies, colleagues, and friends. Do you bear responsibility for your handler's death, or do you move on, reminding the world and yourself that there wasn't any way to fight that blue haze?

He was trying not to think about it, his focus instead on Natasha's lips as she chewed on her food, full and inviting and a reminder that ten years on he still hadn't worked up the guts to tell her how much he loved those lips. And that ass. And those incredible tits. And that..._ everything._

His leg was propped up on the back of her chair, her knee knocking gently on his inner thigh, and he looked away from her lips, instead focusing on where their legs touched intermittently. He could feel her gaze on him, but ignored it, instead absently reaching for the other half of his sandwich and taking a large bite.

He vaguely recognized the sound of a zipper and the rustle of a hand sliding beneath clothing, but ignored it until her hand slid up his leg and into his, a piece of stiff folded paper between their palms.

Taking the paper, he put down the messy food and carelessly wiped his wiped his fingers on a couple of wrappers that lay discarded next to his basket, not bothering to look up from where her hand still rested on his lower thigh. Unfolding the paper, his eyebrows crinkled in confusion and he looked up, meeting her eyes.

She raised an eyebrow and he tugged at the Velcro of one of his own pockets, pulling out a similar piece of well worn card. She smiled, and patted his leg, taking it from him and scooching her chair a little closer until his foot hung over the back and her knee was dangerously close to his crotch. Leaning forward until her breath caressed his cheek, she spoke. Voice low, cracking a little, whether from extended silence, or from something else he wasn't sure.

"I trust you. Do you trust me?"

He didn't answer, instead smiling a little, and turning his head. Suddenly his lips were on hers, hand buried in her filthy, dust filled hair, and his heart was singing at her response. Hand clutching tightly at his leg, the other on his cheek, still holding the photograph.

It was all light and hope and desperate longing and ten years of pent up frustration and it was _wonderful_. Lips and tongues and fingers and hands gripping tightly at clothing and flesh and hair and_ everything._

It wasn't until the others' deathly silence was interrupted by Tony Stark's drawl, that he remembered where they were.

"You know, that's pretty fucking hot. If you wanna do it right here I'm cool with that."

Stark's comment was followed by a chorus of groans and negative responses in various forms, and the pair broke apart, grinning at each other like stupid teenagers. She untangled her hand that held the photograph from his hair, and tore it in half, then in half again, repeating the process until it was nothing but tiny pieces of paper, small enough to shove into a soda can.

He looked down at his own photo and grinned. Ripping it up with one last glance of the red, buttock shaped mark on the shiny glass, he looked back up at her, feeling lighter than he had for the first time in years.

"So... I hear Budapest is nice this time of year."

_End._


End file.
